


Christmas Peak

by shadow_in_the_shade



Category: Crimson Peak (2015)
Genre: Christmas Fluff, Consensual, F/M, Fluff, Porn with Feelings, Sharpecest, Sibling Incest
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-15
Updated: 2015-12-24
Packaged: 2018-05-06 23:18:22
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 5,167
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5434541
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/shadow_in_the_shade/pseuds/shadow_in_the_shade
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A Crimson Peak Christmas special!</p><p>It's their first Christmas after being reunited and Lucille has never experienced a real Christmas before - this year Thomas is determined to change that. Chapters one and two are complete fluff, the E rating is just for chapter 3 ;-)</p><p>This is totally consensual sibling incest here so if you hate that steer away! :-)</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**1.**  

 

He’s up to something. She knows it and, even though she suspects it will be nothing bad, it makes her nervous all the same. Whenever she asks he tells her it’s a surprise and however much she says she does not like surprises he will not quite hear her, because who does not like surprises, really? He reassures her again and again that it will be a good surprise, that she will love it; but she still wishes he would believe her when she says she does not like to be surprised. She is not sure she can remember a surprise that was good in her life and has to think back hard.

In the end she gets there; she remembers the times when Thomas was working on something as a child and would not tell her what he was making. It always turned out to be something for her; a no-special-reason kind of present that would always make her smile, more because of the time and care he had taken in trying to please her than anything else. She remembers once he built her an entire silent piano. Well it was not really a piano, just a set of movable hinged keys laid out exactly like the real thing. So many times she had bemoaned the lack of an instrument in the nursery because their parents did not like for them to make an audible noise – nothing that could be heard downstairs, at least. She had assumed he was not really listening. But she wished so dearly that she could practise more often, not just on the rare                             occasions she could use the beautiful grand piano downstairs, and back then she had always been vocal in making her wishes known. She had been vocal since the day she could talk and so from that day forth there had been people telling her to shut up. It had never quite worked, subduing her but never fully silencing.

When he had first unveiled it to her she was not quite sure what she was looking at. Her eyes had widened –

“It’s wonderful,” she said – “But you know I couldn’t possibly play it.”

“No look –” Thomas had been so proud of his creation; well he was what? – nine years old at the time – she was so proud of him too. He had sat down and run his fingers across the wooden keys. Not a sound. He smiled up at her apologetically – “It doesn’t really work – I’m sorry – but I think – the keys are all spaced right and you could practise the moves without making a sound. You could even sing along and I’ll know what you’re playing.”

She had nearly cried at the thoughtfulness of it, holding him so tight and for the longest time. From them on she practised every day on her silent piano and sometimes she did sing along softly to the tune that only she could hear.

Only sometimes he could hear it too. At any rate he pretended he could to amuse her. He would applaud her voiceless performances and tell her how perfect they were. She would grin and tease him –

“Perfect? Did you not hear the terrible mistake I made in the middle?”

“Oh yes – of course – that was bad. Play it again.”

She would always play again, and the next time she would get it right. It was one of the greatest joys of her childhood, indeed her life – to have someone who could hear the music in her head and love it even if it was silent or out of tune.

She wondered if this new surprise was something to do with presents. She liked presents. Finally one day in mid December she found out.

She had been outside, shovelling snow away from the front door. It was their first year back here together and she had forgotten what a job this could be. By the time she got back inside her fingers were frozen and her cheeks smarting with cold. But there was a warm glow coming from the main room that made her smile; that meant Thomas was in there and had lit the fires and she walked in, peeling her wet gloves off and dropping them on the floor – and stopped dead at the sight that she met.

Her eyes widened for all the light; not only the fire but Thomas had lit candles all over the room, and in between the candles branches of holly and mistletoe gleaming shiny green and dripping with red and white berries, blood and pearls adorning the room like jewels. And to the side of the fireplace the tree. She had never seen a tree inside a house before. It would have been magical even if it were not all lit up. There must have been a hundred tiny candles flickering in their little gold brackets and the tree shimmered with silver and red and gold, , little ornaments in copper and wood and bright paint. It made her think of fairy tale lands she had only ever read about and the whole room smelled sweetly of cinnamon and pine.

And Thomas. She needed him for her fairy tale more than anything. He was bent over the fire, piling up more logs, but he stood up when he heard her and smiled at her, beaming.

“Do you like it?”

For once she was lost for words.

“There’s a – tree!” she managed – “In the house!” She looked at him, breathless with excitement and confusion – “Why?”

“It’s a Christmas tree,” he smiled, taking her hands as she came to join him by the fire – “Oh your hands are so cold!” He rubbed them in his as he went on – “I found out about them in Whitehaven – people do all sorts of wonderful things at Christmas sister – like trees and presents and lighting everything up – and there’s music and celebrating and foods – it’s simply fantastic – I thought maybe – well that you hadn’t had any of them and so I wanted you to – well I wanted to make this Christmas special.”

Hands warmed she inspected the tree, gently touching some of the decorations, looking close at the wooden carvings –

“Did you make these?”

“Some of them. The wooden ones yes, some others I bought when I was last in town. It’s been so hard keeping it a surprise.”

“Thomas you – you – slipped a whole tree past me – that _is_ a surprise!”

She walked around it –

“We never had anything like this before. Mother and father never –” she murmured.

“I know. Our aunt said – well she – ” Thomas coloured – “She said some very rude things about mother and father –”

“Good,” Lucille nodded.

“She said they were very strange to do nothing. That everybody else did. Remember we used to give each other presents – what we could –”

She remembered; Thomas had made her things and she had been so angry at herself for not having anything good to give him, cursed herself for her lack of talents, suspecting he would not be happy with a beautifully pinned moth. She had given him tools usually, things she had stolen from the kitchen that he could use in his inventions. They had coloured in paper for streamers and wrapped their presents up in brown paper.

“Theresa told us –” she murmured. Thomas quietly beamed to hear her say it, she never mentioned Theresa – not unless she was particularly happy – “She told us a few of the Christmas traditions, gave us little presents and smuggled mince pies up to the attic – you remember?”

“Yes –” he squeezed her hand in happiness – “I remember. In fact –”

“Won’t these burn the tree down?” She was simmering with an excitement she could not put down, inspecting the tiny candles.

“Oh no you see I –” Thomas grinned, another bit he was especially proud of  and he showed her as he explained – “I made these brackets fit the branches like – so – and they fit in so safely, I made sure there were no branches above any of the flames, so it’s quite safe.”

“It’s wonderful.”

“So are you”.

It was true; her eyes were actually sparkling. Thomas clasped her hands.

“I thought we might – have a proper Christmas this year. We’ll buy real presents and you can play Christmas songs – out loud –” they both chuckled a little at the memory of the silly silent piano she had loved so much – “ _And –”_ he added – “I made mince pies.”

He had set them out on the tiny table by the fireplace with a steaming pot of hot chocolate. The pies were a little crispy round the edges and a little sticky but they went down on their knees by the fire and grinned at each other over the pies like children.

The fire crackled while outside the snow fell, piling up dangerously on the fragile roof, but inside Allerdale Hall glowed, sparkling for the first time in living memory with genuine festive cheer.

__x__

**Ahh, I’m so delighted with this ship for giving me an excuse to write a proper Victorian Christmas! Okay this chapter was utter utter fluff, but I think my poor children needed it. So will the next one be but then chapter 3 I’ll finish off with some lovely Christmas sex scene, how’s that? :-)**

**Also blame my beta, _zedrobber,_  for the title. Honestly I suck at titles so their joke suggestion got taken up. :-P**


	2. Chapter 2

**2.**

“Lucille!” Thomas called over from the fireside – “Lucille dearest?”

She stopped playing and swivelled round from the piano, glaring, terse and stiff from being interrupted and scowling at him, irritated at being disturbed.

“Yes?”

“That wasn’t quite what I meant when I said Christmas carols, sweet sister.”

She blinked slowly. He had foolishly let her know how unnerving he found it when she did that and so she did it whenever he began to irritate her. It was hardly really blinking; she closed her eyes slowly and opened them again to stare at him with placid danger.

“You gave me the music – thank you – you said they were all genuine Christmas carols. What’s the matter?”

“Yes but – I did but – you’ve been playing the Coventry Carol for twenty minutes now and it’s – well you know – it’s the one about dead babies and it’s so – so –”

“Yes?” She asked it so pleasantly that if he was fumbling before now he was really starting to sweat;

“Sad,” he finished lamely – “It’s so – D minor.”

“I _like_ D minor,” she replied, calmly – “I thought it was pretty.”

“Yes but – there are other tunes – here –” he crosses over to the piano, flips through the song book – “How about that one?” He kisses the top of her head so sweetly as he moves away to sit down, this time, taking the chair just behind her to listen to her play, that she simply sighs at him tolerantly and plays the first few bars. She gets through perhaps half a verse before sighing and stopping.

“No,” she shakes her head – “No Thomas no, I just don’t feel it.”

He sighs and rolls his eyes.

“Fine. Alright. No Deck the halls. You pick. Not dead babies, please Lucille?”

She rolls her eyes right back and plays _In the bleak midwinter._ It still sounds sad, he thinks, but she sings along to this one and it sounds like a lullaby. He closes his eyes and listens to her voice and feels, for once, safe in their home, protected from the cold and the snow outside. Her voice comforts him, gently rubbing, stroking his forehead like fingers. Her voice is low and almost ethereal, she lends a certain tragedy to the words that he is not sure was supposed to be there but in a strange way he likes it. It feels like she weaves a spell when she sings, a beautiful shimmering bubble to hold him in, safe. It is good to feel safe.

She soothes herself as well, lending the same tragedy to the next song and the next and it is not sad, this curious melancholy, but soothing and she smiles and plays with her own eyes half closed. Because this is good, this is sweet, all her favourite things about her and no need to go anywhere, not until the New Year if they do not want to. The food is in for Christmas and the presents are wrapped and everything shimmers with the glaze of a fragile perfection that can never last but it is easy to pretend just now that it could.

Presents, she thinks, half pensive, half amused, were very nearly a nightmare. She is still peevish in the assumption that Thomas has probably made a much better job of it than she has. She knows that he has made her things and knows that they will be good, beautifully designed, thought through and successfully created to please her. She knows that nothing she could make would be good enough to give in return but desperately wanted to make something to show that she could put that level of thought and time into it too.

She has spent days over the past week trying, becoming more and more infuriated with her perceived lack of skill or imagination, certain at what she could only assume was a genuine lack of ability –

“To do _anything!_ ” she cried out a few nights ago in frustration, throwing the last in a long series of drawings onto the fire. He kept asking her what she was drawing of course and she would not tell and certainly not show because she wanted to draw him the most beautiful thing she could think of but no attempt at capturing his likeness will come close to the perfection that she sees in him and her ability to transfer her love to paper is a source of endless frustration.

After she went up to bed in a mood about it all, he crept down beside the fire to pick up one of the crumpled balls that had missed. He felt wicked looking when he knew she had told him not to but he had to know what she was so desperate to draw him. He recognised himself instantly in the smoothed out but still wrinkled sheet of paper and his eyes filled with tears to see himself like that. He wished he could ask her if it was true, if she really saw him like that, if he could possibly be as beautiful as her pen suggested and her heart seemed to see. But he could not ask because he should not have looked and in the end he kept the picture hidden in a boring book on mechanics that he kept with the tools in the workshop.

In the end she had trekked all the way down to town to get his presents, which she supposed was a failure on her part but she _had_ to at least get him something he would like or use and in the end she _had_ made something, though she told him several times a day that he was going to hate it.

As she came to the end of the song she found herself thinking that she could not remember when she had ever spent so long engaged in such sweetly innocent, normal activities. It gave her a certain shiver of anxiety, that was certain; she found herself desperate to prove that she could do this normal thing and get it right, while at the same time utterly uncertain as to whether or not she could. But she would try. She would do the rituals that made the season so much more important than the stories behind them; stories she had never been able to bring herself to invest much in. She would do presents and food and even walking in the snow if it was what Thomas wanted. She supposed she could even read _A Christmas Carol_ out loud on Christmas Eve, even though she found it frankly nauseating and could not bring herself to utter the last line without at least thinning her lips a little. She turned her head quietly to see Thomas still smiling in a daydream of listening to her, smiled back and turned back to the keys to play a happier tune.

Thomas smiled behind her again as she trailed into _God rest ye merry gentlemen,_ understanding that this was her compromise; that she would never play all those ridiculously cheery songs however much he asked. He supposed at this rate he might even be able to push his luck and have her read some Dickens on Christmas Eve, even though he knew she could not get past Tiny Tim without wincing a little. He could not have cared less for the story, though he remembered some enjoyable arguments when they were little as to whether or not the ghosts were ghosts. They were not, they had both decided. He just liked to hear her voice; it soothed him now as much as it ever had, kissed him and rocked him and stroked him to sleep on a tide of words.

He was starting to decide that he liked Christmas.

__x__

**I can imagine Lucille going “God bless us every one” with a face like actual death, just complete deadpan. My beta wants me to add that 15 years later she found the drawing he did of her when it fell out of the book as she was tidying up after him and she remembered it and was like “Why did you keep this?” it he got all shy and told her how much he loved it and treasured it all this time.**

**Sorry if this chapter was crappy, I’ve been mega tired and work and blah blah blah….will get chapter 3 – the fruity one! – up by Christmas eve I hope!**


	3. Chapter 3

**3.**

Fresh snow had fallen in the night and their footsteps followed them through the grounds in a trail of crimson through the white. It was a beautiful day, like something in a story, a picture postcard dripping red. The sun was bright on the snow and for what seemed like the first time in weeks the sky was actually blue. They had walked out the door into a pure gleaming white world and, while she had blinked, dazzled at its beauty, Lucille had feared she could never belong in such a world. As such she was not sad that they made the white world redder with every step; looking back on their footsteps, together in the snow and finding them beautiful too. Just different.

For once they had woken at almost the same time, the cool Christmas sun streaming pale gold through the window as though it came through water. They had woken each smiling to see that the other’s face was the first sight that greeted them. They yawned, shifted in the sheets, kissed lightly and smiled again. Some days they did this all day, moving almost in unison, one entity in two bodies. From the outside it might have looked strange, but they never looked in on themselves from outside, the bubble was too secure, too comfortable, too safe. They had even said their first words of the morning together, reaching the same realisation at the same time –

“It’s Christmas!” they whispered, smiles widening into grins. Thomas had kicked the bedsheets off first, knowing he would take longer to dress. Lucille screeched at the sudden cold and was still calling him all manner of names as they ran downstairs, Thomas still buttoning his shirt and Lucille simply throwing on a dressing gown, hair streaming and tangled.

It must have been some Christmas magic that seemed to regress them both ten years that morning as they ran down to the tree in the main room, falling to kneel in front of the presents like so many excited children.

“Me first!” she exclaimed but Thomas shook his head, laughing and lighting candles around the tree.

“Fire first!” he insisted – “Then breakfast.”

“I’ll do the fire,” she rolled her eyes – “But the hell with breakfast!”

It seemed a fair compromise. While she got the fire going, crackling and roaring in the fireplace, he dashed to the kitchen and threw on the dinner they had prepared the night before. _Then_ he came back – with tea – to agree that it was present time, the hungry look in Lucille’s eyes suggesting that if he did not allow her to start she would rip the wrapping off _everything_ in a matter of seconds. He unwrapped the ones that looked like books first; one of them was actually a tool kit and he smiled to see the instruments shine, remembering the days she had got what she could gather from around the house. The soft one was a scarf to match her when she was in red because he knew it pleased her when they matched. She did not hold back on offering up a gentle lecture with the gloves she had got him which were fingerless so he could work in them and _not be always hurting yourself so much,_ she had suggested. He left the one he suspected she had made him until last, though she looked terrified when he touched it, quickly insisting for the hundredth time that he was going to hate it. When he opened it and did not quite know what it was he strove desperately to hide it but she pounced upon his faintest frown and snatched the manuscript out of his hand.

“Well how do you wrap up a tune anyway?” she demanded. All her presents were tangible, hand carved or put together things, many of them soft and warm because he knew she could never have enough soft warm things for their sweet nest of a bed. There were books she had not heard of and so many fairy tales she had heard spoken but never seen in print. He had made her such perfect little things for her room, and a whole mobile of moths that appeared to fly when pushed in the right direction.

“You –” he felt slow, finally getting it – “Wrote me a tune?”

“It’s terrible.”

“Please play it.”

“No, it’s terrible.”

“ _Please,_ Lucille!” She snorted to hear the pleading whine come back into his voice that he had perfected with such devastating success as a child. He even started to widen his eyes at her. He knew she could not refuse his big eyes and hopeful smile.

“Oh, alright then”. She played the tune as they had both known she would and he did not even try to stop himself crying to hear it. It was a sweet tune, and innocent, at least to begin with, as though she was trying to describe him in music; he could hear the cadences of his own voice in measured beats and see his own smile in the lighter most lilting moments. There were riffs of the lullaby and the gentle scrape of cog wheels, there was the tapping sound his fingers made on the table when he was thinking hard and the wind through the house that felt like the background to their lives. And she had tied it altogether in a whole made up of the way she saw him, so much love binding something that could have been meandering and strange up into a perfect whole. It made him feel rather like the picture she had drawn of him, but more so. She was more eloquent in music than when she tried to speak her feelings with words and he thought his heart might burst she filled it so full.

After dinner _everything_ felt like it would burst, and so here they were, walking hand and hand in the snow, black and scarlet figurines in a white and crystal world.

On the top of the crest they stood and looked out across the moors leading out to the hills, almost unrecognisable in the snow.

“How big the world is,” she murmured – “And all hidden – like you could peel back the snow in one big sheet and peep at the world underneath. It looks so soft.” Her eyes were dreamy then, and he knew she was thinking what it would be like to lie down in all that softness and sleep. But if she did that, in truth, she would be dead. It was an unbearable thought that made him squeeze her fingers tight and turn her face away from the snow and to him.

“ _You’re_ soft,” he blinked at her, just as dazzled as he was by the snow, she was so red, like rubies on the snow, a splash of blood, the damp seeping up her skirts and turning the hem to black. It was more than a beautiful picture; it did something to him that he could not begin to articulate.

“I want you,” he said, breath clouding steamy on the air; it was an inadequate expression from so much desire but he turned stupid in front of her, tongue tied in an attempt to offer up this prayer. The smile she gave him back was red as well; she might have been frightening if her eyes had not shone with warmth and he could see her breath joining his and dancing out into the snow and then there was no space between them and he could taste the frozen air like blood upon her lips.

“Home?” he whispered, the breadth of a silk sheet between their faces.

“Home,” she echoed, nodding, slipping her hand back into his. His palm tingled against hers and he could not feel the cold. They followed the red trail back towards the house, blood-like footprints in the snow.

By the time they got back inside the snow had started to fall lightly again; it glittered in her hair like jewels that could never be replicated. There was a beautiful flush in her cheeks that made him stop in the doorway to kiss her, lips warm, faces frozen. There was always something laughing and breathless about kissing in the snow; when he pressed his forehead to hers it felt as though they might freeze together. He said as much and she smiled;

“I’d like to go that way,” she said – “Frozen together, one block of ice, they’d never separate us then, not even when we were dead.”

The thought seemed to please her so he did not chide her for morbidity and he knew he she would argue with him if he did anyway, he could almost hear her telling him for the hundredth time how morbid death was _not._

“Come on –” he took her hand, leading her through, back to the fire, filling up the wood – “Let’s live first”.

“Yes,” she smiled, kneeling down by the fire and loosening her hair. He watched her shatter the snow crystals apart, turning into water in the warmth and sliding through her hair in tiny silver streams. She gathered her hair over her shoulder and he knew to come in behind her and unfasten her laces, fingers aching and almost trembling as he peeled away the damp satin. She was still red underneath, firelight playing on her skin, painting her in red and gold and shadow and he felt himself becoming desperate just from looking at the curve of her back.                            

She turned round on hearing the first shuddering hitch in his breath, squirming impatiently out of her skirts and pulling him to kiss her; he tasted of the fire, of wood and smoke and the outside air and he kissed her back as though he would like to swallow her whole. He wished he could tell her how wonderful she was, how beautiful but his tongue twisted around such deep devotions and nothing came out besides –

“I need you”.

She nodded. She was beginning to know it, not just believe it. She slithered down, beneath him on the cushions piled around the fire, in this place where they had built a half permanent nest of soft things and smiled to see him almost destroy his shirt sleeves in an effort to take everything off too fast. Sometimes she liked to help; but on days like today when he was really desperate she liked to watch him struggle – as long as it was not for too long. Still she was as relieved as he was to feel his skin against hers, almost as though something that had pained her constantly before had stopped hurting when they came together. And then he was inside her and touching her all at once and she could almost feel the blood run inside her, crackling streams of fire under the skin. She could feel his delight as much as her own and knew it could never be this way with anyone else. He _was_ her and right now she could believe they were the same – or at least that he had all the good qualities she lacked and by being this close she could be good too as well as beautiful. She watched the firelight move on his skin too, the same shadows the same flame moving over them both and could not begin to tell herself apart from him. It was as perfect as she could ever bear.

And then, lost in sensation, she dug her nails into his back as he thrust into her and he scratched her right back every time it hurt, growling not her name but _sister_ in her ear, kissing her neck and shoulder so gently while he rammed into her with her skin under his nails and his under hers.

“ _Brother,_ ” she returned, smiling because she knew he would not want it to undo him but it did and he came, one final savage thrust and he was coming so deep inside her it could have flooded her heart and she screamed while he tried and failed to stifle his groans in her neck, his breath on her skin just heightening her pleasure and making her fly in the flames for longer.

Outside the snow fell thicker and the crimson was covering up white again, footprints fading back into the white. Anyone trying to look inside would have seen two figures locked together so tight as for it to be indistinguishable what belonged to who, still so pale even in the shimmer of fire and the shadow and gold of the tree; just a flash of bright shining red where her fingers curved around his neck and sliding like a bead of blood down his back.

__x__

**Merry Christmas everyone – or festive greetings, either way! Thank my beta for insisting that I fully describe the tune Lucille wrote for Thomas and for making me fully go into what they got each other for Christmas, apparently this is almost as porny as porn! I may do a bonus chapter for new year if people would like, I believe hints were dropped regarding mistletoe! But until then have a good one!**


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